Fate of Italian Polaris Missiles

Rick Jones wrote:

Yield selection?!? How would that work?


I thought about that also, and I can picture doing in one of two ways:

1.) Most modern nuclear fission weapons use a injection of tritium gas
into the space between the explosive lens and the centrally-located
plutonium "pit" to up yield via a limited thermonuclear fusion effect.
By controlling how much tritium gas gets injected before detonation, you
can control yield (this is the most likely way of doing it).
2.) You could modify the detonation timing of the segments of the
explosive lens (which may be as few as two on modern nuclear weapons) so
that the compression of the central pit was asymmetrical and non-optimal
for full yield.
This would be very tricky to do, as the timing would be down to nanoseconds.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:



There's a famous B&W photo of a model Minuteman car with the missile
being elevated, but I haven't been able to locate it on the web yet.
The missile is exposed, not in a launch tube of any type.

A friend of mine had one for his one for his model train set when we
were kids. It was painted Air Force blue, and had the star and bars on
the side(not very good camo). The top opened and the missle would swing
up into launch position and you would push a small lever on the side of
the car and the spring loaded missle would fly 4 or 5 feet into the air.

Jay Walsh

Pat Flannery wrote:



Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote:

The US was going to do that, only with railroad cars, for some
proposed missile system. I don't remember which missile it was, but I
remember the artists's renditions, lifted right from the viewgraphs to
the pages of AvLeak.



Two of them... both Minuteman and MX (Peacekeeper) were considered for
deployment on trains.
Here's the Minuteman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...Conception.png
...and in a gross violation of national security, here's the finned
version of the rail-based Minuteman for your Lionel model train set,
from the early 1960s:
http://www.bodnarchuk.com/vintagetoy..._LAUNCHING.JPG

http://www.bodnarchuk.com/vintagetoy...E _CLOSED.JPG

That's the one! I recalled the whole car as being blue though. Oh well
it was "mumble" years ago. Thanks Pat.

Jay Walsh

vaughn wrote:
Just Google the term "Dial a yield" or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield


Simplicity suggests that there is a vacuum between the levitated core
and the explosive lens, and the correct amount of tritium gas gets
injected into it just before detonation, as that takes away all the
tricky timing issues involved with the other ways of doing it.
(BTW, I've only heard of tritium gas injection, not tritium/deuterium
gas injection. If you wanted to use deuterium in the reaction, you could
coat the pit with lithium duetride and avoid the half-life problems that
require the replacement of the tritium gas as it radioactively decays)
The gas could get injected several seconds before detonation.

Pat

jay walsh wrote:

A friend of mine had one for his one for his model train set when we
were kids. It was painted Air Force blue, and had the star and bars
on the side(not very good camo). The top opened and the missle would
swing up into launch position and you would push a small lever on the
side of the car and the spring loaded missle would fly 4 or 5 feet
into the air.

I haven't been able to track that one down yet, but I did track down the
Lionel one down that's supposed to have a "Air Force Minuteman/Army ABM"
in it: http://www.davestrains.com/ap3665.html
I just _love_ this baby:
http://www.mrtoys.com/lionel-locomot...ve-6-28411.htm
We're going to take those Hawk missiles right up to the front, and
assuming we can find a track spur aiming in the right direction, point
them straight into East Germany.
You sure hope the guy on the side of the locomotive is wearing earplugs
when they launch.
And now, for Brüno, the Lionel "Girl's Train", in all ze pastel colors
of der rainbow:
http://www.lionel-train-set.com/imag...er%201587s.JPG
Are ve on der right track or der wrong track?
Time, und der switch hitting vil decide. :-)

Pat

On Jun 30, 11:31*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Derek Lyons wrote:
Few people who haven't been to sea comprehend how big the ocean is.
Remember the bit in HFRO where Jonesy calculates the Atlantic ocean is
thirty times wider than his sonar footprint?

I always liked the pre-radar assesment from WWI were someone went up to
a giant map of the world's oceans at the British Admiralty, and stuck a
thumbtack into it...stating: "That's how far any one of our ships can
see in daylight and clear weather."
If things keep up as bad as they are near Somalia, it might be a very
good place to put a comprehensive SOSUS array at.
Provided they don't all start using dhows, that should catch most of them..
If they do start using dhows, then it's time to develop chain shot for
our modern naval guns so we can de-mast them. :-D
Since the thread has now drifted into modern-day pirates, these things
are really strange and interesting:http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/...ilent-run.html
Now _where_ would they have gotten a bridge design concept like that
from?:http://xirdal.lmu.de/xirdalium/xpix/...s_gonzales.png
I think it's about time the DEA pays a little visit to Vulcania. ;-)

Pat

How good is your discrimation? One of those European Commissions
estimates there are 220 illegal fishing boats off Somalia, and another
gives a total of 800 in all.

http://qaranimo.com/2009/Apr/commiss...ril_232_09.htm

http://english.safe-democracy.org/2009/06/04/1205/

Pat Flannery ha scritto:

P.S. My dad served with the 460th bomb group (Black Panthers) in Italy
during WW II, and I have the dread chrome-steel winged erection bracelet
charm from Pompeii sitting in front of me as I write this. :-D

If you're at work, I can joke that your work place isn't worksafe ?

BTW, that figure is called here "cazzo alato"....

As a side note, a certain videogame I'm playing, has in their
romance/smoochie cutscenes, sometimes a winged pig oinking (actually
"moionking",,,) around, whose always make me laugh because of the
unintentional reference to a certain Italian book and saying....

Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.

Pat Flannery wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:
You assume incorrectly. The USAF kept their guidance systems spun up
and aligned while alert, SLBM guidance systems however were not
powered up until we began launch preparations.

I always wondered about that...Minutemen were ready to go 24/7 with
their gyros spun up constantly.
But the SLBMs needed to spin their gyros up and align them prior to
launch...was that due to wear on the gyros from the sub pitching around
and changing alignment versus the stability of a fixed silo?

I suspect the biggest reason is that the earliest FCS lacked the
computational horsepower to maintain the GS ready-to-go, and there has
been no particular reason to change. There's a considerable number of
other preps to do (that can't be done beforehand) before launch, so
getting the GS ready is done in parallel with those.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Fred J. McCall wrote:

Andrew Swallow wrote:
:
:Or putting it another way. The Uk nuclear weapon launch order has
:already been given. London just keeps sending the "wait until you
:can see the whites of their eyes" order. The world's biggest timebomb.
:

Well, that's certainly 'another way'. The fact that it's totally
wrong is something else again.

Well, there's some truth in it, perhaps not in the way Fred intended.
According to these pages:
http://www.slate.com/id/2208219/pagenum/all
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...d-world--.html

On Jun 30, 10:53*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Rick Jones wrote:

Yield selection?!? *How would that work?

I thought about that also, and I can picture doing in one of two ways:

1.) Most modern nuclear fission weapons use a injection of tritium gas
into the space between the explosive lens and the centrally-located
plutonium "pit" to up yield via a limited thermonuclear fusion effect.
By controlling how much tritium gas gets injected before detonation, you
can control yield (this is the most likely way of doing it).
2.) You could modify the detonation timing of the segments of the
explosive lens (which may be as few as two on modern nuclear weapons) so
that the compression of the central pit was asymmetrical and non-optimal
for full yield.
This would be very tricky to do, as the timing would be down to nanoseconds.

Pat

Used to be a dial.